[Music]
[Applause]
so today I’m going to talk to you about
images we’re going to talk about
pictures and video and media we are
bombarded with images constant stream of
visual information but what happens when
that stream turns into a flood children
today are being called Generation M the
M stands for media these children new
research has shown that a child or a
young person today on average accesses
an individual interaction with their
mobile device around two-and-a-half
thousand times some heavier users are up
in the five and six thousand men each
many young people consume over eight
hours of media a day these young people
will see more images than anyone in the
history of the world has ever seen
before I loved watching movies so I was
recently talking to a student about
movies and he told me he didn’t like
what in movies with subtitles when I
asked him why he didn’t like them he
said because I have to pay attention but
this is not your laughing as if this is
something unusual it’s not this is the
norm no we all live in this world where
we constantly multitask many of you
driving here will have been looking
through your wind screens while having a
GPS a digital stream of information
combining with the real world visual
so to talk about images we need to know
why they are important and images are
important because they have power images
convey meaning they help us to
understand the world images convey
emotion the moving pictures we watch the
movies the paintings we look at images
also help our memory you’ve all heard
the expression the picture is worth a
thousand words but images can do way
more than that images have the power to
change your memories human memories are
not set in stone
memories are fluid images have the power
to affect our decision-making and the
choices we make so if these images are
changing our emotions or memories or
behaviors they’re changing us so I want
to take you back to the 1970s and the
work of a great researcher called
Elizabeth Loftus and in the 1970s she
she showed a lot of groups of people the
same video of a motor vehicle accident
and she asked one group how fast were
the cars going when they hit each other
and that group said that the average
speed among that group was about 30
miles an hour just another group how
fast were the cars going they smashed
into each other and that group said 40
miles an hour
they had only watched that video minutes
before and already by changing one word
in a sentence she could change their
memories enough to cause a difference of
10 miles an hour and this works but
repeated over and over again improved in
many different experiments it’s often
called the missing information effect or
suggestive evidence and it’s an example
the cognitive bias we have many
cognitive biases in our lives these
effectors hundreds of times every day
one example is a serial positioning
effect we remember the things we see
first I think things we see lust and
forget about the things in the middle
when you’re browsing through those
movies on Netflix or Amazon Prime you
are a bit more likely to choose the ones
at the start of the queue and the end of
the queue Netflix knows this and it puts
movies there it wants you to watch
anchoring the best example is retail if
I’m trying to sell shoes for $100 and no
one’s buying them the best thing I can
do is put the price up to $500 wait
until enough people have seen that $500
price then cut it down to $200 what
we’ve done is we’ve anchored on that 500
figure and every subsequent decision is
made based on a number relative to that
500 we all think we’re getting a bargain
framing we like to win more than we like
to lose so how I present a question to
you will affect how you make your choice
if there are 400 people and I tell you
if you make this choice you will save
200 of them you might make that choice
if I tell you there are 400 people and
if you met this choice you’re going to
kill 200 of them you probably won’t make
that choice we prefer the glass
half-full
more than half empty so there’s all
these cognitive biases hundreds of them
and they affect us in small ways
hundreds of times a day in every
decision we make and why is this
important well this is the key message
I’m trying to get across to you in this
presentation if the research has shown
that I can seriously affect every
decision you make by changing one word
showing you one number moving something
in a list imagine what I can do when I
start showing you images so
the past about all the 20 years I’ve
worked on creating graphical
reconstructions for courtrooms
reconstructions of forensic evidence and
these are used in courtrooms all over
the world we make them using the same
technology the film and computer games
industries and they use to help people
understand a chronology of events
whether it’s in a crime scene a murder
trial a terrorist trial a plane disaster
or a real traffic accident
but more importantly than just creating
these things as an academic as a
professor I’ve spent over 20 years
researching what happens when we use
these things in a courtroom if I start
showing you these images am I going to
change your memory of an incident or
your decision-making ability so and this
is really nowhere is this more important
than in a courtroom in a courtroom a
person or a company can win or lose
millions of dollars reputations can be
gained and lost people can lose their
Liberty through incarceration jail and
in extreme cases someone could lose
their life with a death sentence so it’s
vital that we can provide objective and
unbiased information but we know images
have the potential to have all this bias
but images have something else they’re
interesting and engaging you’ve probably
all seen this famous statistic that a
golf fish only has an attention span or
a memory of around nine seconds there’s
been a lot of research on human
attention span a lot of work in Canada
with very large sets of participants and
research all over the world has shown
that over the last 20 years human
attention span has gone down from 12
seconds to 8 seconds so congratulations
you have an attention span less than
we and this becomes again very crucial
because we pay attention to different
things humans pay more attention to
things that move we pay then attention
to 3d objects then to 2d pictures 2d
diagrams and less attention to the
written word and the spoken word so did
you all see what happened there many of
you in this room stop listening to me
because something interesting was
happening on the screen and that’s what
happened our attention is drawn away to
these moving images they are very
effective and it seems strange that Here
I am standing on a TED stage talking to
you giving an oral presentation hoping I
can keep you all engaged I’m a professor
and as professors we often stand in
front of classrooms talking to students
trying to keep them awake someone
defined to me that the definition of a
university professor is someone who
talks in other people’s sleep so in a
courtroom we need to keep the jury the
judge the trials of fact whoever’s
involved interested and engaged if
they’re interested engaged they will
remember more which will hopefully lead
to better decision-making in the
courtroom where decision-making is
crucial what we find is yes people are
they are engaged by these moving
pictures and they do their memory
increases significantly and they do make
better decisions and often that I ways
all these cognitive biases that may be
inherent in the images we’re showing so
I want to talk about one specific
example of reconstruction and another
danger point of these images so there’s
a lot of work at the moment in virtual
archaeology
J reconstructing ancient civilizations I
working with colleagues have built some
of these we’ve reconstructed ancient
cities ancient temples ancient artifacts
mainly for me museum exhibits but
there’s an inherent problem when you do
this kind of work and an article in the
Journal of cultural heritage stated this
really clearly and the problem is these
3d representations presenter facade of
truth they present an object reality an
objective reality when in fact they’re
very substitutes objective
humans have a natural capacity to
believe something when they see it and
that’s a problem with these kind of
images in those kinds of situations in
the courtroom situation I also do a lot
of work on forensic facial
reconstruction
when skeletal remains are found if you
watch TV dramas you’ll have seen this
many times we can build a face on a
skull either using physical modeling
techniques with clay or with
computer-generated techniques and
hopefully that will lead to a victim
identification and I want to talk about
one example of this I worked on so
because I do that sort of work I get us
to do this for television programs and
one added quite a few years now was the
case of Nefertiti Nefertiti this was for
a Discovery Channel documentary they
wanted us to reconstruct the face of an
Egyptian mummy who some archaeologists
believe was Queen Nefertiti I worked on
this with Professor Martin Everson from
the University of Northumbria in the UK
and one of my students did monster
modelling a guy called Tim Gilbert who
now works for Rockstar Games builds the
models for grand theft auto so we worked
on this
documentary came out and the face was
seen in news media all over the world
and on websites and I got a phone call
and the ladies that said to me you’re
reconstruction of Queen Nefertiti is
wrong it took me aback a little bit and
I said well what do you mean wrong she
said it looks nothing like Queen
Nefertiti so the obvious question was
well how do you know it doesn’t look
like Queen Nefertiti and she said in a
very authoritative voice because I am
Queen Nefertiti so sure funny story but
she had a point and it’s something I’ve
started to think about a lot more over
the years I’ve done this work the the
way the media in the news organized
organizations present this information
is often this is the first of Queen
Nefertiti this is a face we haven’t seen
for 3,000 years it’s not
I can guarantee should look something
like that we have scientific techniques
for doing this but it won’t be exact
forensic facial animation a
reconstruction is not an exact science
virtual archaeology archeology is far
from an exact science yet we say this is
how Rome would have looked in our
documentaries it’s not it’s one version
so we’ve got to be careful how we
present this information how we frame it
and how to assure these images to people
when we’re using them so to finish with
I’d like to talk about one final case or
one final project I’ve worked on for a
number of years I lived in Australia and
when it was in Australia I worked on a
very large multi-million dollar project
called jive and the jive project stood
for juries and interactive virtual
evidence and we work with a good team of
academics left but led by David Tate at
Western Sydney University and we work
with the Australian Federal Police the
equivalent of the FBI in Australia and
the Institute of judicial administration
and in the Supreme Court in Sydney we
run a series of trials we run terrorism
trials and we had real judges real
lawyers real forensic experts and
multiple juries in every trial so that
we could collect more data from jurors
now in these trials after we had run
them each trial had different evidence
different visual evidence we wanted to
see if we could change the decisions
people made in the courtroom using this
visual evidence and the good news is we
didn’t people actually make good
decisions in those situations humans
have the capacity for good decision
making when we know something’s
important we talk about it we think
about it we weigh the evidence and
that’s what people did which far
outweighed any cognitive bias we could
put in through these images the bad news
though is even though we can get past
these cognitive biases we don’t hundreds
and hundreds of times every day your
choices are being affected by these
biases so my takeaway message really is
that media producers the people who make
the websites you visit all of them know
about this when you’re scrolling down
your website you think you don’t look at
adverts of course you do it’s the one
thing that moves on the page you’ve
looked at it even subconsciously and
then back to the text they know how to
make you look so next time you’re on a
website and you’re going to make a
decision about what movie to watch or
perhaps what to buy or where to go to
eat just have a look at how the
information has been presented to you
and just perhaps sometimes you’ll make a
better choice thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
so today I’m going to talk to you about
images we’re going to talk about
pictures and video and media we are
bombarded with images constant stream of
visual information but what happens when
that stream turns into a flood children
today are being called Generation M the
M stands for media these children new
research has shown that a child or a
young person today on average accesses
an individual interaction with their
mobile device around two-and-a-half
thousand times some heavier users are up
in the five and six thousand men each
many young people consume over eight
hours of media a day these young people
will see more images than anyone in the
history of the world has ever seen
before I loved watching movies so I was
recently talking to a student about
movies and he told me he didn’t like
what in movies with subtitles when I
asked him why he didn’t like them he
said because I have to pay attention but
this is not your laughing as if this is
something unusual it’s not this is the
norm no we all live in this world where
we constantly multitask many of you
driving here will have been looking
through your wind screens while having a
GPS a digital stream of information
combining with the real world visual
so to talk about images we need to know
why they are important and images are
important because they have power images
convey meaning they help us to
understand the world images convey
emotion the moving pictures we watch the
movies the paintings we look at images
also help our memory you’ve all heard
the expression the picture is worth a
thousand words but images can do way
more than that images have the power to
change your memories human memories are
not set in stone
memories are fluid images have the power
to affect our decision-making and the
choices we make so if these images are
changing our emotions or memories or
behaviors they’re changing us so I want
to take you back to the 1970s and the
work of a great researcher called
Elizabeth Loftus and in the 1970s she
she showed a lot of groups of people the
same video of a motor vehicle accident
and she asked one group how fast were
the cars going when they hit each other
and that group said that the average
speed among that group was about 30
miles an hour just another group how
fast were the cars going they smashed
into each other and that group said 40
miles an hour
they had only watched that video minutes
before and already by changing one word
in a sentence she could change their
memories enough to cause a difference of
10 miles an hour and this works but
repeated over and over again improved in
many different experiments it’s often
called the missing information effect or
suggestive evidence and it’s an example
the cognitive bias we have many
cognitive biases in our lives these
effectors hundreds of times every day
one example is a serial positioning
effect we remember the things we see
first I think things we see lust and
forget about the things in the middle
when you’re browsing through those
movies on Netflix or Amazon Prime you
are a bit more likely to choose the ones
at the start of the queue and the end of
the queue Netflix knows this and it puts
movies there it wants you to watch
anchoring the best example is retail if
I’m trying to sell shoes for $100 and no
one’s buying them the best thing I can
do is put the price up to $500 wait
until enough people have seen that $500
price then cut it down to $200 what
we’ve done is we’ve anchored on that 500
figure and every subsequent decision is
made based on a number relative to that
500 we all think we’re getting a bargain
framing we like to win more than we like
to lose so how I present a question to
you will affect how you make your choice
if there are 400 people and I tell you
if you make this choice you will save
200 of them you might make that choice
if I tell you there are 400 people and
if you met this choice you’re going to
kill 200 of them you probably won’t make
that choice we prefer the glass
half-full
more than half empty so there’s all
these cognitive biases hundreds of them
and they affect us in small ways
hundreds of times a day in every
decision we make and why is this
important well this is the key message
I’m trying to get across to you in this
presentation if the research has shown
that I can seriously affect every
decision you make by changing one word
showing you one number moving something
in a list imagine what I can do when I
start showing you images so
the past about all the 20 years I’ve
worked on creating graphical
reconstructions for courtrooms
reconstructions of forensic evidence and
these are used in courtrooms all over
the world we make them using the same
technology the film and computer games
industries and they use to help people
understand a chronology of events
whether it’s in a crime scene a murder
trial a terrorist trial a plane disaster
or a real traffic accident
but more importantly than just creating
these things as an academic as a
professor I’ve spent over 20 years
researching what happens when we use
these things in a courtroom if I start
showing you these images am I going to
change your memory of an incident or
your decision-making ability so and this
is really nowhere is this more important
than in a courtroom in a courtroom a
person or a company can win or lose
millions of dollars reputations can be
gained and lost people can lose their
Liberty through incarceration jail and
in extreme cases someone could lose
their life with a death sentence so it’s
vital that we can provide objective and
unbiased information but we know images
have the potential to have all this bias
but images have something else they’re
interesting and engaging you’ve probably
all seen this famous statistic that a
golf fish only has an attention span or
a memory of around nine seconds there’s
been a lot of research on human
attention span a lot of work in Canada
with very large sets of participants and
research all over the world has shown
that over the last 20 years human
attention span has gone down from 12
seconds to 8 seconds so congratulations
you have an attention span less than
we and this becomes again very crucial
because we pay attention to different
things humans pay more attention to
things that move we pay then attention
to 3d objects then to 2d pictures 2d
diagrams and less attention to the
written word and the spoken word so did
you all see what happened there many of
you in this room stop listening to me
because something interesting was
happening on the screen and that’s what
happened our attention is drawn away to
these moving images they are very
effective and it seems strange that Here
I am standing on a TED stage talking to
you giving an oral presentation hoping I
can keep you all engaged I’m a professor
and as professors we often stand in
front of classrooms talking to students
trying to keep them awake someone
defined to me that the definition of a
university professor is someone who
talks in other people’s sleep so in a
courtroom we need to keep the jury the
judge the trials of fact whoever’s
involved interested and engaged if
they’re interested engaged they will
remember more which will hopefully lead
to better decision-making in the
courtroom where decision-making is
crucial what we find is yes people are
they are engaged by these moving
pictures and they do their memory
increases significantly and they do make
better decisions and often that I ways
all these cognitive biases that may be
inherent in the images we’re showing so
I want to talk about one specific
example of reconstruction and another
danger point of these images so there’s
a lot of work at the moment in virtual
archaeology
J reconstructing ancient civilizations I
working with colleagues have built some
of these we’ve reconstructed ancient
cities ancient temples ancient artifacts
mainly for me museum exhibits but
there’s an inherent problem when you do
this kind of work and an article in the
Journal of cultural heritage stated this
really clearly and the problem is these
3d representations presenter facade of
truth they present an object reality an
objective reality when in fact they’re
very substitutes objective
humans have a natural capacity to
believe something when they see it and
that’s a problem with these kind of
images in those kinds of situations in
the courtroom situation I also do a lot
of work on forensic facial
reconstruction
when skeletal remains are found if you
watch TV dramas you’ll have seen this
many times we can build a face on a
skull either using physical modeling
techniques with clay or with
computer-generated techniques and
hopefully that will lead to a victim
identification and I want to talk about
one example of this I worked on so
because I do that sort of work I get us
to do this for television programs and
one added quite a few years now was the
case of Nefertiti Nefertiti this was for
a Discovery Channel documentary they
wanted us to reconstruct the face of an
Egyptian mummy who some archaeologists
believe was Queen Nefertiti I worked on
this with Professor Martin Everson from
the University of Northumbria in the UK
and one of my students did monster
modelling a guy called Tim Gilbert who
now works for Rockstar Games builds the
models for grand theft auto so we worked
on this
documentary came out and the face was
seen in news media all over the world
and on websites and I got a phone call
and the ladies that said to me you’re
reconstruction of Queen Nefertiti is
wrong it took me aback a little bit and
I said well what do you mean wrong she
said it looks nothing like Queen
Nefertiti so the obvious question was
well how do you know it doesn’t look
like Queen Nefertiti and she said in a
very authoritative voice because I am
Queen Nefertiti so sure funny story but
she had a point and it’s something I’ve
started to think about a lot more over
the years I’ve done this work the the
way the media in the news organized
organizations present this information
is often this is the first of Queen
Nefertiti this is a face we haven’t seen
for 3,000 years it’s not
I can guarantee should look something
like that we have scientific techniques
for doing this but it won’t be exact
forensic facial animation a
reconstruction is not an exact science
virtual archaeology archeology is far
from an exact science yet we say this is
how Rome would have looked in our
documentaries it’s not it’s one version
so we’ve got to be careful how we
present this information how we frame it
and how to assure these images to people
when we’re using them so to finish with
I’d like to talk about one final case or
one final project I’ve worked on for a
number of years I lived in Australia and
when it was in Australia I worked on a
very large multi-million dollar project
called jive and the jive project stood
for juries and interactive virtual
evidence and we work with a good team of
academics left but led by David Tate at
Western Sydney University and we work
with the Australian Federal Police the
equivalent of the FBI in Australia and
the Institute of judicial administration
and in the Supreme Court in Sydney we
run a series of trials we run terrorism
trials and we had real judges real
lawyers real forensic experts and
multiple juries in every trial so that
we could collect more data from jurors
now in these trials after we had run
them each trial had different evidence
different visual evidence we wanted to
see if we could change the decisions
people made in the courtroom using this
visual evidence and the good news is we
didn’t people actually make good
decisions in those situations humans
have the capacity for good decision
making when we know something’s
important we talk about it we think
about it we weigh the evidence and
that’s what people did which far
outweighed any cognitive bias we could
put in through these images the bad news
though is even though we can get past
these cognitive biases we don’t hundreds
and hundreds of times every day your
choices are being affected by these
biases so my takeaway message really is
that media producers the people who make
the websites you visit all of them know
about this when you’re scrolling down
your website you think you don’t look at
adverts of course you do it’s the one
thing that moves on the page you’ve
looked at it even subconsciously and
then back to the text they know how to
make you look so next time you’re on a
website and you’re going to make a
decision about what movie to watch or
perhaps what to buy or where to go to
eat just have a look at how the
information has been presented to you
and just perhaps sometimes you’ll make a
better choice thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
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